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First published in the United States of America by Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2020
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Fifield, Richard, 1975- author.
Title: The small crimes of Tiffany Templeton / Richard Fifield.
Description: New York : Razorbill, 2020. | Audience: Ages 14+ | Summary: After a stint in reform school, fifteen-year-old “Tough Tiff” returns to small-town Montana to face grief, an overbearing best friend, her first boyfriend, eccentric neighbors, and the production of a play she wrote.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019036446 | ISBN 9781984835895 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781984835901 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Conduct of life—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Grief—Fiction. | Family problems—Fiction. | Montana—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.F532 Sm 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019036446
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0
The hardest words I’ve ever had to write:
For Loretta Jones, 2/10/43–8/19/18.
We were blessed.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
From the Desk of Tiffany Templeton
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
From the Desk of Tiffany Templeton
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
From the Desk of Tiffany Templeton
Chapter Eleven
From the Desk of Tiffany Templeton
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
From the Desk of Tiffany Templeton
Chapter Fourteen
From the Desk of Tiffany Templeton
Chapter Fifteen
From the Desk of Tiffany Templeton
Chapter Sixteen
From the Desk of Tiffany Templeton
Chapter Seventeen
From the Desk of Tiffany Templeton
Chapter Eighteen
From the Desk of Tiffany Templeton
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
From the Desk of Tiffany Templeton
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
From the Desk of Tiffany Templeton
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
From the Desk of Tiffany Templeton
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
From the Desk of Tiffany Templeton
Chapter Thirty-Four
From the Desk of Tiffany Templeton
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
From the Desk of Tiffany Templeton
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter One
THE COURT-APPOINTED ADVOCATE DROPPED ME off at two o’clock in the morning. She didn’t even bring me all the way to my house, just left me on the side of the highway. I guess she wasn’t worried about my safety, lugging a suitcase without wheels all the way around the loop in the middle of the night. I was the only girl from Dogwood that didn’t want to be paroled, but the other girls didn’t have to return to Gabardine. I dragged the suitcase across the frozen ruts in the road, the ice sparkling under a thin winter moon, the only light in the entire trailer court. The front door was unlocked, but nobody locked their doors in my hometown.
It was only appropriate that my first day back at high school fell on the first day after spring break. I guess my classmates looked well rested. I had slept for less than four hours, and I’m sure it showed.
David could smell my vulnerability. Before the bell even rang in homeroom, he had managed to set a trap for me, just to watch it spring shut. Eighty-three days, but it was like I never left. I thought he would acknowledge my return, but he looked away and moved his desk closer to the radiator, cold as always. He barely fit in his desk. David was nearly six foot three, the kind of guy who was born with muscles, even though I know the only exercise he got was from arts and crafts. Blond, gorgeous, and this morning, full of evil.
David was my best friend.
That morning, he ignored me, so I knew a plot was in motion. I expected something spectacular, but he just sent over a cheerleader to say something mean. He’d appointed himself in charge of the cheerleaders ages ago, and they all did his bidding. Kaitlynn, Caitlyn, Victoria, and Becky may have been varsity, but they were totally JV when it came to everything else. David fed them the insults, just like he monitored the rest of their diets. Their eyes betrayed them, every single time.
Kaitlynn approached me, as soon as she made sure everybody was seated.
“If we had a yearbook, you would be voted most likely to do a school shooting,” said Kaitlynn. She looked off to the side, calculating, double-checking her memory, making sure she had put emphasis on the right words. David even coached their line readings.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not a yearbook category,” I responded.
“Whatever,” she said. “I can just see you shooting up trigonometry.”
“It would probably be gym class,” I said. “But I’m the only one in our class who doesn’t own a gun.” Hunting was big in Gabardine. Principal Beaudin actually let kids miss school for hunting season.
“Freak,” she said, and walked away. It was a lame retort, but that’s how I knew it was her own.
I endured these things, because they didn’t mean them, and because this was some sort of gay muscle that David was training.
You would think he would be a target, but he was always the first to draw his weapon. I guess you could call him the most popular person in our school, but we all
grew up together, and there was no hierarchy. David was not popular, he was a glue trap that we all got stuck in before we knew it.
I know it sounded weird, but David was my best friend. I think he threw chaos at me just to keep things interesting. I was the wild card. I was the one that didn’t fit his idea of what a high school should be. David read every single Sweet Valley High book, but he thought they were instruction manuals.
When we were freshmen, he tried to convince me to get a makeover. It was not the first time. “When we’re old, we will remember high school,” he had said. “Even if you end up in prison, you’re still going to reminisce.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“There’s no reason we can’t have normal high school things. Drugs, eating disorders, homecoming queens.”
“We don’t have homecoming,” I said. I guess I was wrong about that. After almost three months away, here it was, my own personal homecoming.
During earth science, Kaitlynn appeared in the doorway. She was the office aide, which meant she roamed the halls and sometimes cut holiday decorations out of construction paper.
“Mr. Baker. The sheriff is in the office.”
“So?”
“He’s here for that girl.” She pointed at me. I’d known her for fifteen years. “And he’s armed.”
I followed her down the hall, but she power walked, so I couldn’t keep up. David made all of his cheerleaders power walk, so I had to call after her. “You know my name,” I said, and she ignored me.
Outside of Principal Beaudin’s office, Kaitlynn sat down in the waiting room, lowered herself into a tiny desk, right next to his secretary’s large work station. Piled in front of her were scissors, white printer paper, Elmer’s glue, and a vial of green glitter, probably left over from Christmas. These were the same Arbor Day decorations we always had.
“Do these look like trees?” She held up a wonky triangle, the base split by something that was supposed to be a stump. She had outlined the entire thing in glitter. If David was here, he would have corrected her, and the stump would be brown. He hated nature, but he took arts and crafts very seriously.
“I guess,” I said and tried to see through the frosted window to figure out who was in Principal Beaudin’s office. Kaitlynn glared at me, waved a pair of scissors. The secretary flinched at this.
“Arbor Day isn’t even a real holiday,” I said. In Gabardine, we already had too many trees. “I’m glad they’ve got you doing such important work.”
“Don’t be an asshole,” said Kaitlynn.
“Language,” warned the secretary. Her phone rang once and did not ring again. “They’re ready for you,” she said, and returned to her own project, tapping like a bird at her computer keyboard.
I knew what my mother thought of Principal Beaudin because she told me. She didn’t trust people with weak chins, and she especially distrusted people who tucked in their shirts. I hadn’t seen Principal Beaudin in three months, and although his shirt was tucked in, he seemed to be growing some sort of goatee. I had worried that things would change while I was gone, but the gray ring of hair around his mouth seemed to be the only progress in the entire town.
Obviously, I knew the sheriff. Sheriff Schrader was not an unfamiliar face. He came to our high school to deliver a speech about the dangers of drugs, although it always ended up being about poaching, which was an actual felony.
Sheriff Schrader smiled at me. I think he liked the fact that our county was boring and what I had done was not. Principal Beaudin pointed at the chair closest to his phone.
“Your mother refuses to come in,” said Principal Beaudin.
“She’s at work,” I said. “Everybody knows that.”
“I get my gas elsewhere,” said Principal Beaudin. He lived in Fortune, three times the size of Gabardine, and I think their streetlights and sidewalks made him cocky.
“That’s a mistake,” said Sheriff Schrader. He knew our town, drove at the tail end of every parade. None of my crimes had ever caught his attention, except for the threats. My mother said this was because he got a check from Homeland Security every month. Even though I was never charged for any federal crime, the sheriff wanted that check. He warned my mother that my threat to a federal employee was proof I was being radicalized, even if it was just the Mail Lady.
“We’re going to try this through speakerphone,” said Principal Beaudin. “It’s a little out of the ordinary, but my secretary is a professional, and she knows all the latest technology.”
Principal Beaudin didn’t see me roll my eyes. He pushed a button on his phone, and the room was filled with the sound of the dial tone. He consulted a piece of paper on his desk, and we all listened as he tapped out the number for the gas station.
Even over the phone, Sheriff Schrader still feared my mother. He removed his hat as we waited for her to answer, held it over his heart.
I had not spoken to my mother in three months. She was not waiting for me when I arrived last night, even though I’m sure somebody called her. She still wanted nothing to do with me, and it seemed only appropriate to hear her through a small box, at a safe distance.
“What?” My mother sounded the same. Normally, she would have answered the gas station phone with something cordial, but she had obviously been expecting this call.
“Mrs. Templeton, I’m sitting here with your daughter and the sheriff.”
“I know,” said my mother. “I’m sitting here with eighteen boxes of Hershey’s bars that need pricing. Some of us have work to do.” Her voice had become a fearsome thing.
Principal Beaudin looked at the sheriff, but he was silent. Principal Beaudin decided to break the silence. “We wanted to meet in person,” he said. “It’s my job to keep this school safe, and I worry about the path that Tiffany has chosen.”
I wanted to tell him that this wasn’t a path, and it certainly wasn’t a choice. It was a tunnel, and I had to keep moving to survive. The room was silent as we all regarded each other and stared at the phone, like it was a showdown.
Once again, Principal Beaudin broke the silence. I don’t even know why the sheriff was there. “We’re still waiting for the files from Tiffany’s reformatory school. I can assure you that my secretary has requested them several times, because she is a professional.”
“Tiffany has been back for less than seven hours,” said my mother. “I know how bureaucracy works. You should receive the files in a few years, after she graduates.” My mother exhaled, dramatically. I could tell she had lit a cigarette. “You don’t need to worry about my daughter,” she said. “She completed her rehabilitation.”
“Most of it,” I said, and I swear I could hear my mother’s body tighten over the phone line.
“People grieve in different ways,” she said. “My daughter chose violence.”
And now Sheriff Schrader spoke, his hat still clutched to his chest. “I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am. But in light of her record, Tiffany’s going to need to be extra careful around Mrs. Bitzche,” he said. “In fact, I hope she stays away from all federal employees. We don’t mess around with terrorism. Before you know it, your daughter will end up in Guantanamo Bay.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” said my mother. “But I’m sure she appreciates the warning.”
“Last month I went to a training,” said Sheriff Schrader. “You never know who is radicalized. There’s teenage girls in the Middle East who strap bombs to their chest.”
“That’s too much of a bother for Tiffany,” said my mother. “You’ll have to trust me on that.”
“Sure,” he said. “Teenagers have no work ethic these days. But there’s more, Vy.”
“Of course there is,” said my mother. “I got rid of all the silverware. We have no weapons in our house.” I heard her exhale. “Shit. I forgot my razors. That’s just great, Tiffany. How am I supposed to shav
e my legs?”
“Sheriff Schrader has conditions,” said Principal Beaudin. “Do you need to find a pen to write them down?”
“Jesus,” said my mother. “I’m not in special ed.”
Sheriff Schrader leaned down to the phone. “Tiffany is still on probation. She’s got fourteen months left.”
“She served her time,” said my mother.
“Minus eight days,” I added.
“It’s the court order,” he explained. “She’s going to need to see the probation officer once a month. Real nice gal. Drives over from Fortune.” Sheriff Schrader smirked at Principal Beaudin. “Maybe y’all could carpool?”
“When and where?” My mother had grown tired of this conversation.
“Third Wednesday of the month at city hall,” said Sheriff Schrader.
“That’s in two days,” I said.
“There’s one more condition, Vy.” He was grim-faced, and his jaw flexed like he was gritting his teeth. “I don’t want to issue a restraining order. You need to get a post office box.”
“That infringes upon our rights,” said my mother.
Sheriff Schrader knew about my mother’s politics. He was prepared. “Rural delivery is not a constitutional right. I double-checked.”
My mother hissed into the phone. “You cause nothing but sorrow, Tiffany Templeton.”
We all heard the boom as she slammed the phone down.
As I walked back from Principal Beaudin’s office, I knew she spoke the truth. Even before I was a confirmed juvenile delinquent, I was trouble. My mother used her words to hurt people, but I used my fists. My classmates trafficked in the truth. When they said my dad was fat, it wasn’t teasing, just their primal desire to poke. Maybe we were all rats in the same cage, but they were the ones that kept pushing the buttons. They needed their fix, I guess, and so I punched, kicked, pushed them into mud puddles. The brave ones sprang back up, and I gave them a real beating. As a kid, I didn’t know why my parents were so fat. It didn’t make any sense to me why they were different than the other parents. They were only seen in one dimension, all weight and no depth.
I paused outside of the classroom. I took a deep breath, like I had been taught at Dogwood. I wasn’t that girl anymore. I wasn’t a fighter. I had plans now.
The Small Crimes of Tiffany Templeton Page 1